Fireside Chat with Andrea Moe

Andrea Moe talks about strong domain expertise on the sales side of the business helping Videa to better market to the specific customers.

Know My Team

We’re a lean, 3-person team at Videa but collaborate with a talented group of contractors and vendors to solve for some specific areas: website and creative design, public relations, SEO, video production and blog content creation. I believe what drives the Videa marketing team is a conviction in what we’re doing for the television industry and a personal conviction to be the best at what we individually bring to our craft. It takes a village to exceed our goals and consistently strive for uniqueness. We share a common desire to be creative and tackle challenges with a thoughtfulness that results in a competitive advantage.

I am part of a tech-savvy Marketing, Sales and Branding teams

At Videa, we’re building technology for an industry that has not significantly evolved the way television advertising has been bought and sold in over 50-years. It’s a heavy lift that requires us to be tech-savvy if we’re to continue to be successful communicating to different technology levels of prospects and customers. We’re also very fortunate to have strong domain expertise on the sales side of the business, helping us to better market to those specific customers.

Should young sales professionals train themselves to master MarTech skills

I’m not convinced sales should necessarily need to master MarTech skills. There should be a baseline understanding of marketing and technology and how sales contribute to and align with marketing. I see that as one of marketing’s primary roles. That said, there are technologies such as CRM and collaboration tools that are core to the sales function and yes, competency does create an advantage. Probably the best way for a salesperson to learn is to dive right in. I’ve found salespeople to be quite tenacious and have personalities that aren’t afraid to fail – they kind of have to have this temperament to be successful – so tactical leaning by doing is the best way to build a skill set that isn’t first nature. Conferences are also a great way to immerse yourself in a new technology.

B2B Marketing Strategy and Customer Acquisition Models

My role at Videa is diverse. We’re a small company (~130 employees), the product is new to the market (we’ve been transacting for 6 quarters) and as such my team wears many hats with responsibilities encompassing the disciplines of marketing, product marketing, PR, and advertising. In all my previous roles, I had responsibility for both product management and marketing disciplines in the enterprise and start-up spaces.

How marketing technologies push the boundaries of present-day brand engagement and customer experience

I believe we’re at an all-time high in terms of technologies pushing the boundaries of many aspects of the way we engage with consumers and how they consume information. People are looking for experiences that grab their attention – they want to relate to, and see themselves in a brand – and marketers are challenged with shorter attention spans. Analytics and reporting need to keep up with this frantic pace to consistently measure and react to what’s working and what’s not. A strong marketing program requires staying on top of this quickly evolving dynamic environment that we all live within.

The Dynamic Elements Driving Our B2B Customer Engagement Model

How we execute Engagement Economy vision, Strategy, Product and Corporate development at Videa

A lot of what we do encompasses thought leadership and change management. This is an industry that has an entrenched way of doing business and we need to educate our prospects and customers on not only what technology we’re bringing to the market but also bring people along by clearly articulating why change is needed. It starts with a clear understanding of the company’s strategic and product direction. We then execute our marketing plan to support that vision.

Marketing and Sales Alignment: Content as a Unifier

Tools and Strategies We Use to Create Effective B2B Content at Videa: a Sneak Peek into our Martech Acceleration Strategies

Strategically, my team stays very in-tune with what’s happening in the industry. We read what our customers do and watch how the industry reacts to trends and news, and then relate that back to our unique positioning. It sounds like a simple thing but keeping your ear to the ground is one of the best ways to stay aligned and be relevant in a constantly changing industry. We are aggressive with our approaches and strive to incorporate more B2C strategies, such as influencer marketing, which tends to be leveraged less in the B2B space.

Every day is a content day. We publish to our blog roughly every other business day, supporting that with social amplification, and create/manage other collateral and artifacts daily. Whether it be producing video, sales tools, webinars or presentations, crafting content and messaging for our audience is core to what we do. Perspectives and trends can change quickly so our marketing tools need to do the same.

What resonates depends on which buyer persona we’re speaking to and where they are in the buying journey but overall, we find that shorter, more digestible video, infographics and other interactive content work better than more traditional forms of communication like white papers.

Customer Success and Technology Insights

Part of the benefit of automation is that one doesn’t need to revisit the technology on a regular basis. It does take management and continuous alignment with sales, however.

Videa has a unique advantage in the market as we are owned by Cox Media Group. Having the benefit of this enduring, positive brand and the relationships that affords us drives a different marketing business model than most startups. It’s not a typical lead gen scenario for the most part. The technology we use helps us nurture prospects, create brand awareness and support the overall sales process.

Sales and marketing technologies unifying or evolving together to deliver higher ROI to CMOs

Absolutely.

Clearly, there will be technologies that serve a specific purpose but the more coordinated we can be between sales and marketing, the better the advantage we have. Referring to ROI, I believe we need to come together more as disciplines to better solve for what is measured and is attributable to revenue. It cannot be an us versus them world in sales and marketing. Traditional measurements for success need to evolve as technology does.

An Advice I Received That I Would like to Pass on to the Martech Industry

Eat your own dog food. We’ve all experienced bad or irrelevant marketing and this stems from a myriad of things – in larger organizations there can be more politics and cooks in the kitchen for example – but if we are to be successful marketers we should be truly empathetic to our target market(s) and customers. We are always asking ourselves how a message or piece of content will resonate by looking at things through our buyer persona’s lens. The other aspect of this is knowing your product. Marketers can be better stewards of the product by having a deeper knowledge of the product they are bringing to market.

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Jacqui Chew

Thank You, Andrea, for answering all our questions. We hope to see you again at MTS, soon.